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Friday, June 26, 2015

I'm not going to say that I love the ten-foot pole. It's useful but it can also be awkward in a lot of situations and rarely gets DMed well. Ask any DM to be honest and you'd fine that if properly adjudicated, most ten-foot poles would get broken or lost very quickly! The same thing goes for the mule, but since that is an animal and not a piece of mundane equipment we can set that argument to the side for this day. A backpack is the quintessential piece of adventurer gear but it's almost too mundane. Perhaps thieves tools is the answer I should give. They have some flair and a group that doesn't have them has to make a lot of tough choices about making noise and spell slots.

Artist - Rick Hershey

However, I am a DM mostly and I don't need to restrict myself to what might or might not be useful to adventurers as a favorite, not that a player taking this poll necessarily has to either. I choose the chest. More specifically, I choose the treasure chest, or even its smaller version the treasure box. Yup, let's say "treasure box" because that covers all sizes of this fine, mundane item. One of these can be a minor annoyance or an adventure unto themselves. You don't even need to decide that in advance. It is totally up to the players if they wish to spend much time on it. How paranoid are they? Will they rush to open it, regardless of potential traps? Will they search it thoroughly for false bottoms and hidden compartments? All sorts of possibilities with a treasure box, so I choose it as my favorite!

Artist - Rick Hershey

The original D&D 30-Day Challenge meme had a duplication and was a bit more edition-specific than I thought was useful for my purposes, so I made some adjustments and had some folks on the Internet give it the once-over. Here's the result and what I will be doing through the month of June as "CMG Extras."